Indians take first round

Six football players from Marysville and Yuba City high schools took on a pair of 17-pound pizzas Tuesday night and ate their way to a dramatic ending the details of which could bust up your breakfast.

Let's just record that Yuba City High quarterback Justin Crook was on his fifth slice of pepperoni, olive and sausage pizza when his stomach threw a penalty flag and Marysville was declared the winner by default in the Primetime Pizza Triple XL Pizza Challenge.

Crook declared the pizza "pretty damn good," asked to take some home and was confident he'll face no after affects when he takes the field Friday in the revival of the historic Big-Little Game that pits the Honkers of Yuba City High against the Indians of Marysville High.

"It should be out of my system by Thursday at the latest," he said of his expected recovery from too much of the good thing that is pizza.

The showdown between the three-man pizza eating teams in Marysville on East 12th Street was just a preliminary anyway to the main event that brings back a game described as the local, high school version of Cal Berkeley playing Stanford.

Ralph Hendrix, 56, who played for Marysville in 1969 and 1970, remembers crowds of 10,000 gathering to see the game that faded away as enrollment at Yuba City High swelled to more than 3,000 and the number of students at Marysville High shrunk when Lindhurst High School opened in 1975.

"I still have friends from the Big-Little Game," said Marysville resident Hendrix, a counselor and professor at Consumes River College.

The opening of River Valley High in Yuba City in 2005 reduced the size of the student body at Yuba City High and helped bring back the big rivalry.

Gary Cena, principal of Marysville High and a graduate of the school, is happy to have the game back.

"We're hoping it helps people reconnect with this special cultural event," he said.

Marysville resident James Kraus, 51, an assistant football coach for Marysville High, remembers flying back from the upstate New York college where he played football to attend the 1978 Big-Little Game and walking a half-mile to the stadium because of the crowds gathered there.

"There's nothing bigger," Kraus said of the event.

Harninder Purewal, 16, who plays football for Yuba City High, said the return of the game is a big deal on campus. "Everyone's talking about it at the school," he said as the pizza challenge began Tuesday.

Barbara Chiono teaches at Marysville and is a 1977 graduate of Yuba City High but won't face any conflicted loyalties Friday night.

Who will Chiono be rooting for? "The Indians, of course," she answered.

The pizza challenge that ended in victory for Marysville was born in Las Vegas at a June trade conference on the pizza business, recalled Neil Stinson, 43, Primetime Pizza owner and a 1984 graduate of Marysville High School, who was in a referee shirt Tuesday for his role as emcee of the pizza challenge. Stinson also coached Marysville from 1999 to 2002

Vince Garramore, 58, marketing manager for Primetime and a 1968 graduate of Yuba City High School, came up with idea for the pizza challenge — and wondered what all that cheese may do to the high school athletes.

"It'll be interesting to see if they're able to run like they're used to," Garramore said.

Yuba City High head football coach John Ithurburn, a graduate of the high school who in 1986 played in a Big-Little Game, suggests the contest's return is off to a good start.

"We didn't do anything like this," Ithurburn said as scores gathered Tuesday for the pizza challenge.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ryan McCarthy at 749-4707 or rmccarthy@appeal-democrat.com